


Porchlight

by cadignan



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, F/F, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-19
Updated: 2013-08-19
Packaged: 2017-12-24 01:18:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/933421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cadignan/pseuds/cadignan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“My name is Bela Talbot. I procure items for a select clientele. And I don’t want another hunter. I want you.”</p><p>“Well, Ms. Talbot, my name is Jo Harvelle. I serve two-dollar beer in this bar here. And I don’t appreciate your tone.”</p><p>(Warnings for general creepiness and some vague references to abuse, about the same as what's in the show. Also this is canon 'verse, roughly season 3, except that the Roadhouse still exists.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Porchlight

> So far away  
>  Curses wild upon you  
>  Hungry and gaining  
>  Porchlight burns so far away  
>  Miles away  
>   
>  —Neko Case, “Porchlight”

 

“Are you a hunter?”

Jo keeps wiping down the bar with a dishrag, takes a second and a sidelong glance to assess how she ought to answer. Most people don’t have to ask. You just come in and sit your ass down at the bar and if you happen to be bleeding ‘cause a creature took a swipe at you, well, somebody’ll stitch you up. There’s not a lot of conversation at the Roadhouse. Trash talk, beer orders, cat calls aimed at Jo’s ass, sure. Slurred insults and drunken death threats on occasion. They don’t do _questions_. They do answers even less.

They also don’t do willowy English girls in skirts and heels. It’s more of a plaid and denim kind of place. A beards and pot bellies kind of place.

Jo takes her sweet time answering. Her royal highness doesn’t have much patience.

“I phrased it as a question out of politeness. I already know you’re a hunter. I need your help.”

“What makes you think I’ll help you?”

“You don’t _really_ want to spend the rest of your evening wiping up spilled beer and giving the finger to every man who leers at you.”

“Aren’t you a regular Nancy Drew.”

“Helping me will be a great deal more profitable than your shift here,” the woman says. She eyes the late night crowd with disdain—she probably eats her breakfast cereal with disdain, except she probably doesn’t eat breakfast cereal. She probably eats foie gras or drinks champagne or some other weird rich-people habit. Whatever it is, she clearly doesn’t think much of the Roadhouse, and that puts Jo on guard. It might not be much to look at—and yeah, Rick in the second booth on the left is an asshole, and Jerry’s well on his way to being drunk enough to try to cop a feel again, and Mom told her not to punch any more customers—but still, it’s home.

“I don’t help strangers,” Jo says. “I don’t know who you are or what you do and I’m not interested in finding out. Find yourself another hunter.” Even as she says it, she has to resist her curiosity. Figuring out that Jo’s bored with the weekend late shift at the Roadhouse is no big feat. But what could this woman possibly want with her? What the hell kind of hunt is she on?

“My name is Bela Talbot. I procure items for a select clientele. And I don’t want another hunter. I want you.”

“Well, Ms. Talbot, my name is Jo Harvelle. I serve two-dollar beer in this bar here. And I don’t appreciate your tone.”

“Call me Bela,” she says, and then smiles and adds “ _please_ ” like it’s hilarious.

Jo stares her down until she stops smiling. It’d be a lot more effective as a tactic if Bela weren’t so damn pretty. By the end of it, Jo’s not so much staring Bela down as she is just staring. Her gaze falls on the shape of Bela’s lips, and a new smile curls across them.

“You’ll like it,” Bela says, her voice low. No description of a hunt—no matter how spooky—has ever made Jo shiver like that. Bela’s still got that satisfied cat look to her. She raises her brows. “You might even get to kill a vampire.”

“Decapitation,” Jo says. “You really know how to sweet-talk a girl.”

“There’s more,” she says. “He lives alone in a Civil War era brick farmhouse, about an hour’s drive from here. He’s a reclusive collector, but _art_ is not the only thing he collects.”

“No nest? Vamps usually have a nest.” Damn it. This is real conversation territory. She hasn’t exactly said yes yet, but her interest’s getting the better of her. It doesn’t hurt that she’s flattered that Bela came here looking for her specifically. Both the guys in here are bigger and older and more experienced than her, and they’ve obviously got nothing to do. But Bela wants _Jo_.

Bela shakes her head. Her amber hair catches the light, even in the dim bar. _Stop looking_. “As far as I can tell, he has a house full of human groupies, but there are no other vampires. They probably can’t stand him. He’s a complete wanker.”

Jo laughs at that. “Must be, if other vamps can’t handle it.”

“You have no idea. He goes by Jean-François Valois de la Huchette, but the name on his birth certificate is Gary Meyers.”

Maybe Bela’s not such an unbearable snob after all. “What the hell is he doing in Nebraska?”

Bela lifts one shoulder and displays her open palms. Somehow even a shrug looks elegant when she does it. “Enjoying the relative seclusion of acres of corn? I don’t really care why he’s here. He has something I want.”

“What is it?”

“A letter.”

“You’re going to sneak into this guy’s house and decapitate him for a _letter_? Don’t get me wrong, he’s a vampire, I’m totally okay with ganking him. But still. Seems like a lot of trouble for a letter.”

“Well, it’s not,” Bela says shortly. Jo narrows her eyes. But then Bela’s smile comes back and she says, “And we’re not going to break in. We’re going to walk in through the front door.”

“And say what? ‘Hi, we’re here to murder you’?”

“As it so happens,” Bela says, “he’s having a party. Or rather, it’s a sort of… continuous party. And wayward young blonde,” Bela pauses to sweep a hand down her body and then to gesture at Jo, “waifs such as ourselves are always invited.”

The little blonde girl thing again. Jo rolls her eyes. The fuck is up with these creeps and their fixations? She could dye her hair and take up Olympic deadlifting, but she might as well own it: Joanna Beth Harvelle, world’s deadliest waif. Still, she wishes Bela wanted her help for some other reason.

Jo purses her lips. “Let me get this straight. You want to drive me to Fuck-Knows-Where, Nebraska in the middle of the night to go kill a vamp, and there might be a creepy human-vampire blood orgy happening in the house at the same time?”

“I never said it was an orgy. But in essence, yes.”

“Well,” Jo says airily. She flips her hair over her shoulder. “I have _nothing_ to wear!”

Bela’s face lights up. “That,” she says, “I have covered.”

Jo shoos Rick and Jerry out of the Roadhouse and closes up early. Her mom’s out of town for two days and she’ll probably be pissed to Hell if she finds out about this, but Jo doesn’t plan on her finding out. She leads Bela upstairs and into her bedroom. Jo rarely thinks about what her bedroom looks like—it’s just the place where she flops down to sleep after the late shift. But as soon as Bela enters, it’s clear that her room is childish and unsophisticated, with its twin bed and band posters with curling edges tacked to the walls. Her closet doors are open, as usual, displaying a pile of old sneakers and boots and a disorganized array of plaid shirts and frayed jeans. Shit. Bela probably lives in a fucking palace. Or maybe it’s all modern and clean inside, with a giant bed like a five-star hotel room. Jo tries not to think about it.

“Right,” Bela says. She plucks a plastic sandwich bag out of her purse. It’s full of something that looks like black fabric. She sweeps her gaze down Jo’s body. If any of the Roadhouse patrons looked at Jo like that, she’d break their fucking noses. When Bela does it, it heats up her cheeks. “This ought to fit you.”

It takes Jo a moment to realize that Bela is talking about whatever’s in the plastic bag. “Excuse me?”

Bela opens the bag, reaches into it, and unrolls something so small it can’t possibly be a dress.

“Where am I supposed to hide a machete in _that_?”

“With luck, you won’t have to,” Bela says. “Jean-François has a large collection of antique weaponry, including swords. He’s a fool. You should have an opportunity to slip away and find yourself something appropriately lethal at some point.”

Bela gestures expectantly with the so-called dress, and Jo realizes that Bela is waiting for her to undress. She almost blushes again. _Don’t be a prude_. Still, she turns around so she can face away from Bela, who’s probably already wearing something black and lacy under her coat.

Jo’s plaid shirt and her tank top are on the floor before she spares a thought for her underwear. Shit, do they have any holes? She can’t remember. She shoves her jeans down her thighs with her eyes half-closed, and when she finally looks, relief washes through her. Pink and white stripes, slightly worn elastic, no holes. She imagines a _Cosmo_ cover with an article entitled “Vampire Orgies! What to Wear?” and almost laughs. Striped cotton panties probably don’t make the cut, but she doesn’t plan on having any sex. Jo glances at Bela, patiently turned away and holding the dress out for her to take. _Probably_.

She grabs the dress from Bela and has to flip it over a couple of times to find the top. It’s just a tube of fabric—a _short_ tube of fabric—with a silver zipper extending halfway down the back. She unzips the dress and steps into it. She only gets the zipper up an inch or two before Bela is behind her, taking the metal tab out of her hands and pulling the zipper up slowly. The dress closes around her. Bela’s hands ghost up the naked skin of her back.

Jo finds it hard to breathe. The dress is really tight. That must be it.

Bela touches the bare skin of her shoulder and she nearly jumps. “Turn around?”

Jo turns around. She’s not sure if she wants to drag the dress up or drag the dress down, but she can only pick one, and either way, she’ll be exposed. How the hell is she going to kill a vampire in this thing? She’ll be halfway through her machete swipe and she’ll have to stop to pull her damn strapless dress up her tits.

“Stop tugging on it,” Bela says. “You look fine.”

“A ringing endorsement.” Jo doesn’t even care how she looks, not really. She cares about not getting dead. That’s what’s important. Things that are not important: the way Bela is _still_ looking at her and the fact that the flush creeping across Jo’s skin is not entirely virginal modesty. “What’s our cover?” she says, trying to distract herself.

Bela kneels down and roots through the pile of shoes in her closet and finds the only pair of heels, a cheap pair of strappy black sandals that Jo hasn’t worn since senior prom four years ago. It’s not like any of the dudes in the Roadhouse have offered to wine her and dine her. Not that she would have said yes.

Bela hands her the shoes. “What cover?” she says. “It’s a party. You’re my date.”

Great. First date she’s had in years is about infiltrating a den of weirdo vampire wannabes and then slicing and dicing a vamp. Jo finishes buckling the ankle straps on her shoes and then looks up at Bela. She doesn’t exactly look apologetic, but it’s probably as close as she can get.

“Next time I’ll spring for champagne.”

Jo smiles. She’s been on worse dates.

Bela is charming when she wants to be, and they breeze through the rest of their preparations. Jo puts up her hair and puts on a raccoon’s worth of eye makeup. She’s pretty sure she looks ridiculous, but Bela shakes her head at that. Bela puts on a lot more makeup, too. “Vampire groupies,” she says, frowning into Jo’s bathroom mirror and retracing her lash line in black. “Not known for their taste.”

She’s still wearing her coat. Jo wonders what her dress looks like underneath. _Stop that. Think about why she wants that letter so bad_. She can’t afford to think about Bela. She has to think about getting in and getting out alive. And even if they do get out alive, she still won’t know anything about Bela.

Except that she’s snarky and cute and has a tube of lipstick in her purse that’s actually a blade. Jo has a knife collection, but it doesn’t have anything that clever in it. It’s mostly just big knives and little knives. Steel knives, copper knives, silver knives, knives with smooth edges, knives with serrated edges. She never thought about collecting _pretty_ knives. Knives with secrets.

She looks at Bela, now seated in the driver’s seat and watching the empty stretch of highway lit up in front of them. _Look like the innocent tube of lipstick, be the blade inside_. Jo smiles. She might have dropped out of college, but she’s not stupid.

She waits to ask about the letter. They talk about other things, about the Roadhouse, about the hunters they know. When Jo mentions Sam and Dean, Bela smirks and looks over at her.

“Have you ever…?”

 _She likes men_ , Jo thinks, and tries not to slump down in her seat. Then again, Jo likes men, sometimes. She also likes Bela. “No,” Jo says, honestly. “But I’ve thought about it.”

Bela laughs. “Who hasn’t?”

“Saints,” Jo answers. “Monks. Robots.”

“Well, I can safely say I am none of those.”

“I don’t usually sleep with hunters. They all smell like sweat and stale beer and most of them couldn’t find the clit if it had a flashing neon sign pointing to it.”

There’s a moment of silence, and Jo wonders if she’s ruined everything by being too candid.

Bela looks away from the road again, for long enough that Jo wants to lean over and take the wheel. But she can’t move. This must be what it feels like to be wandering through the rainforest and come face-to-face with a jaguar. Bela’s eyes glow in the dashboard lights. She bares her teeth in a smile.

“I don’t fall into any of those categories, either.”

Bela turns back toward the road and Jo feels a little lightheaded. Do people still swoon in 2007? Will their reclusive vampire host be able to provide her with some smelling salts?

Bela takes mercy on her and steers their conversation back toward the immediate future. “I need to get into the more private parts of the house in order to search for the letter. I’ve not been in before so I don’t know how organized he keeps his collection. I hope to charm him into showing me around a bit with some rather vile flattery, just so you’re forewarned. I need you to sneak away from everyone else and find something deadly, just in case. Keep an eye on the time and make sure I don’t spend too long with our dear friend.”

“Okay,” Jo says. “I can do that.”

“I don’t know Jean-François personally but by reputation, he doesn’t seem like the sharpest knife in the drawer. I expect to be able to get the letter even if he’s still in the room with me. I’m quite light-fingered.”

Jo is definitely not thinking about _that_. “You’re a thief, you mean.”

“And an excellent one at that.”

In principle, Jo disapproves of stealing, but it seems trivial right now. “Let’s hope so. So when do heads roll?”

“If I’ve been with him for an hour, I need you to come looking, and I need you to come armed,” Bela says. “If at any point you feel threatened, do what you need to do.”

“What if you get out with the letter before an hour’s up?”

“You’re welcome to kill him. It’s of no consequence to me.”

“Not so interested in making the world a better place, huh?”

“I have more pressing issues to deal with.”

That sentence ends like a door slamming shut, and they’re pulling off the highway into a long gravel drive anyway, so Jo doesn’t ask. The driveway winds up to the house, poorly lit and half-hidden by a copse of suitably overgrown trees. It is a grand old brick house, the kind that could be on the cover of _Midwest Living_ if it weren’t so dilapidated. As they get closer, Jo notices that all the curtains are drawn.

Bela parks the car and sheds her coat. At first, Jo wants to complain that Bela’s dress is considerably more modest than hers. It has a halter neck and the drape of fabric in the front is suggestive but not scandalous. Then Bela stands up and turns around. There is nothing but bare skin between the half-inch-wide strip of fabric across the back of her neck and the panel stretched tight across her ass. Jo supposes it’s a skirt, but it requires some imagination to think of it that way. It requires a lot of imagination to think about Bela’s dress when there’s so much of _Bela_ on display, the long column of her neck, the angles of her shoulder blades and the gentle curve of her spine, down to the two dimples just above her ass. The view is briefly interrupted by her dress, but only briefly. The dress is only an inch longer than the lower curve of her ass, and then it’s smooth thighs and sculpted calves all the way down.

That much naked skin would look good to a vampire.

Jo swallows. It looks pretty good to humans, too.

Bela grabs her purse and takes off toward the door. Jo scrambles to follow. No one greets them but the door is unlocked, and whatever Jo was expecting, she wasn’t expecting _enough_ of it. Gary Meyers, or Jean-François, is obviously _really_ into being a vampire. It’s dark in the house because there’s no electric light, only flickering candles and old-fashioned oil lamps. The candlelight reflects off ornate gilt furniture and red velvet brocade wallpaper. There are heavily shadowed old portraits hanging on the walls—probably the creepy kind with eyes that follow you. Jo grimaces. In the room off to the left of the entry hall, there are people in various states of undress and consciousness. She can hear low murmurs. It smells—she doesn’t want to think about how it smells.

“Oh my God,” Jo whispers.

“I _know_ ,” Bela says. “Isn’t it _amazing_?”

That’s one word for it.

They thread their way through the salon at left and enter a similarly decorated room. From the inside of the room, it’s more obvious that the curtains are crimson velvet, because of course they are. Her foot bumps against something warm, and she looks down at a teenage girl lying unconscious on the floor, black hair haloing her heads. Surreptitiously, Jo bends down to check for a pulse. There is one, but it’s faint. It’s also right next to a bite mark. Oh, Jo’s gonna enjoy killing this evil sack of shit.

It’s not two seconds before Bela is cooing “Jean-François!” and clamping onto an unimpressive white man in a ridiculous, antiquated costume. He looks surprisingly young under all the frills and waistcoat buttons. He might really be a preserved relic from another century. But Jo doubts it.

“I’ve heard _so_ much about you!”

Bela’s laying it on thick, batting her eyelashes like a cartoon character, but Jean-François either doesn’t notice or doesn’t mind. He’s looking down his nose at Bela, all his ugly vamp teeth hidden behind a smug smile. She goes on for awhile about his fantastic reputation for awhile, how brilliant and dashing and _rare_ he is, how mysterious, and oh, she heard he had a great love of _art_ and _literature_ …

“I heard you even have the marquis de Mirval’s library and private papers in your collection!”

Jo rises to her feet as surreptitiously as possible. The room is dark but not dark enough to hide in. She wants to pass behind Bela and the vampire into the next room so she can start searching for weapons. The first two rooms of the house were not promising, but Bela did say the collection would be further back or possibly upstairs.

Bela is putting on enough of a show that Jo gets out of the room with no trouble. As she passes by, she sees the vampire’s hand on Bela’s naked back. Jo shudders as if something undead and clammy is pressing into her own skin. Bela must really want that letter.

Jo passes into a long rectangular room, one that might have been a dining room, but it is decorated in the same way as the others: armchairs, chaises longues, and sofas upholstered in dark colors and brocade, the floor littered with pillows and some people who might be sleeping. There are two women entangled on one of the long chairs and a group of three people on one of the sofas—two women and one man?—all speaking in hushed tones. Some of the women are dressed like her, in modern party dresses, but one of the girls on the long chair is wearing some kind of old-fashioned dress with a corseted bodice and many skirts. Jo can’t place the period, but she supposes the romance of the past is worth more than historical accuracy to these people. There is a collection of objects that might be drug paraphernalia on the floor, but Jo doesn’t recognize them, but she wonders if these people might be using opium. There’s a glass bottle next to the sofa filled with green liquid that she recognizes as absinthe.

No one speaks to her. No one even looks directly at her, which suits her just fine.

She finds a staircase off to the side of the next room, nothing like the grand one in the entry hall, but better for her purposes. It leads into a room that is absolutely plastered with paintings, hung on the wall from waist-height all the way up to the ceiling, barely an inch between them. There are shadowy landscapes and interiors, still life with skulls, scenes of gory martyrdom, and portraits of wistful-looking young people in gilt frames. There’s a glass case in the middle of the room with little sculptures and art objects. Nothing sharp.

The next room is similarly museum-like. There’s even a suit of armor in the corner, but no weaponry. Jo is getting impatient. She’s also getting sloppy: she hadn’t realized, until this moment, that she wasn’t alone.

“What are you doing here?”

The girl looks human, but then, so do vamps. She speaks slowly, from uncertainty or intoxication. She doesn’t seem threatening, and she looks like a half-dressed porcelain doll in her linen slip, but Jo’s not ready to drop her guard yet. She really wishes this had happened _after_ she’d found the swords.

“I’m looking at the art,” Jo says.

The girl approaches her, bare feet eerily quiet on the hardwood floor. She touches Jo’s arm and her hands are warm. Human. Probably. “Leave,” she whispers.

Jo shakes her head, appreciating the girl’s desire to speak softly.

“He’s coming,” the girl says. Her brown eyes are huge. No doll ever looked so terrified. “Once he comes, you can’t get away.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Jo says. “What’s your name?”

“Antoinette,” the girl says, and then her gaze darts around and her voice gets even quieter. “But my real name is Casey.”

 _Bastard_. “Casey, are there any swords in the house?”

There’s a long pause. “No.”

Shit. Maybe Bela’s information was bad. “Are you sure? What about other sharp things?”

Jo’s not wearing a watch but she estimates it’s been half an hour since she left Bela alone with the prince of creepdom. Unarmed except for that tube of lipstick. Jo really hopes Casey knows something useful. After another long pause, the girl hedges: “He told me not to touch them.”

“But he didn’t tell you not to show them to me.”

Decisively, Casey heads back into the first room. She pushes against a small wooden cabinet until it slides across the floor and then removes the two paintings above it. She can’t reach the third one, so Jo steps in and pulls it down for her. Once she’s close enough to the wall, Jo can see that there’s a door set into it, constructed to look exactly like the wall. There’s no knob, but Casey presses against one side of it and Jo hears a latch click open. Jo wonders exactly how long Casey’s been in this house, to know about something like this. The door swings wide.

 _Holy shit_. Jo hates this fucker but she has to admit, his house is kinda awesome.

The door opens into total darkness, but Casey retrieves one of the candles from the room and brings it to Jo. The secret room is the size of a large closet, but the white walls have long columns of swords displayed on them. There must be thirty swords in here. Jo can’t help but admire them. If they gank this vamp with a little time to spare, she might take a few home. It’s not really stealing if you take it from a vampire, and _freak with a sword collection_ sounds way cooler than freak with a knife collection.

In the corner, there’s a halberd that probably belongs to the suit of armor in the other room. Jo considers taking it, but the staff is taller than she is, so she doesn’t risk it. She rejects the longswords and anything that requires two hands for the same reasons. She needs something small and light, and she finds it soon enough. Thirty inches long, the straight blade is double-edged and ends in a cruciform hilt. She hefts it in one hand and swings it around easily. The sword is clean, but the candlelight reflects strangely off its blade. The metal is mottled like flowing water. Jo’s read about Damascus steel, but never expected to see it in real life. She grins.

She takes care to close up the secret room and rehang the paintings as if no one was ever there. After she pushes the cabinet back into place, she looks Casey right in the eye. “You need to get somewhere safe,” she says. “Leave the house if you can.”

Casey shakes her head. Jo wonders what kind of power the vamp might have over her, but doesn’t have time to ask.

“Can you hide?” Jo says. She tilts her head at the secret room. “Not in there. Somewhere you won’t get trapped.”

Casey nods and pads silently out of the room without another word. Jo hopes that girl can move on from this, once the vamp is gone. Speaking of which, she takes her sword in hand and makes her way into the next room, listening carefully. The second floor is tomb-silent, except for the occasional creak of the wood floor bouncing back into place, erasing her steps.

Jo makes her way out of the room with the suit of armor and passes into a room lined with bookshelves. There are no candles burning, but there is light coming from the next room. There is sound coming from the next room as well.

“ _Such_ an interesting figure, the marquis de Mirval! I would love to see his private correspondence, I’m sure it’s _fascinating_ …”

A low voice—rich, sonorous, totally incongruous with Gary Meyers and his bad posture and affectations—replies “Not nearly as interesting as you, my dear.”

Bela’s laugh chimes. The conversation continues, but Jo stops listening to the words. She sidles closer to the open doorway, listening for placement within the room. The three public rooms on the second floor have so far been roughly the same size. She imagines the next room might be like this one, lined with books. Based on the light filtering through the doorway, Bela and the vampire will be on her left when she walks in.

Something in the conversation catches her attention. It’s the vampire laughing.

Jo thinks back to the previous sentence that was spoken, recalls something about this marquis and poetry. There was a name she didn’t know.

“Oh, the marquis collected anything related to Alessandra Scardina, but it had nothing to do with poetry! She was a witch! Like me, the marquis was intrigued by the dark arts. Especially as practiced by beautiful women…” The vampire trails off and Jo shivers to imagine what he might be doing.

“A witch,” Bela breathes, as if she’s never heard of such a thing.

“Accused in Venice in 1577, condemned to death, but it never happened,” the vampire says. “No one knows she got out of it, but she didn’t die then. Legend has it she never died.”

Is that what Bela wants? To live forever?

“They say she outsmarted the devil himself.” The sound of a drawer opening, and then the crackling of old pages. “This folio contains the only existing pages of her personal diary.”

“Do you believe it?”

There’s a quiet rustle of clothing. It must be the vampire moving; Bela’s not wearing enough clothing to make that kind of noise. “Outsmart the devil? No, I don’t believe that. But there are ways to live forever…”

There’s a barely detectable note of panic in Bela’s voice. “But if she had lived forever—,”

“Stop talking,” the vampire snarls. Bela’s sentence snaps in half. The room falls silent except for the quick, shallow breathing of someone whose heart is thudding in fear.

Jo can’t stomach the mental image of the vampire sniffing at Bela’s jugular. Sword in hand, she charges into the room. The vampire has Bela backed against a bookcase. He’s pinning her shoulders with his hands. But Bela catches Jo’s eye and then shoves against him as hard as she can. Her elbow knocks into the glass top of a kerosene lamp. It shatters against the shelf and the books go up in flames. Unfazed by the fire and quicker than both of them, Jean-François lets go of Bela and whirls on Jo.

Jo takes a long-shot swing for his neck and misses. He leaps for her. Jo has no time move out of the way. Her sword clatters to the floor at her side as he tackles her. She struggles under his weight but gets nowhere, and then his lips split apart to reveal the forest of razors in his mouth. The vampire lowers his mouth to her neck, but just as Jo feels his fangs against her skin, something heavy lands on both of them, and then Jean-François flinches backward.

It’s Bela. Bela threw herself on top of them and stabbed him in the neck with that fake lipstick. _Jesus_.

He rears backward and throws Bela off, but Jo has just enough space to grab the sword hilt that’s trapped under her hip. She chops into his side, an ugly and reckless movement, but an effective one. He rolls off her and she jumps up and sweeps the blade of her sword down and through his neck. His head thunks to the floor.

The library and Jo’s lungs are filling with smoke. “Bela! Bela, we have to get the fuck out of here!”

Bela’s on the floor, getting to her hands and knees from where Jean-François tossed her. She’s coughing. Jo extends her free hand and helps Bela to her feet. They sprint through the three rooms between the library and the service stairs, heels rapping against the hardwood floor. Plumes of smoke unfurl behind them.

“Casey!” Jo screams, hoping the girl’s within hearing range. “Casey, run! There’s a fire!” For good measure, she bellows “Fire!” down the stairs. Not even freaky vampire groupies deserve to burn alive.

All her yelling starts a coughing fit. She has to pause to lean against the wall for precious long seconds. Jo waves Bela ahead of her into the stairs, but Bela hangs back, refusing to leave without her. Jo can hear the fire spreading. She lets go of her sword for a moment, then rips off her ridiculous shoes and throws them aside. She picks up her sword again, grabs Bela by the hand, and both of them hurtle down the stairs. The opium smokers seem to have heard her warning, since the den is now empty. The whole house seems to have emptied out. Jo and Bela are the last to emerge onto the drive outside the stoop. The gravel is painful under Jo’s bare feet, but she’s got bigger problems. Not one of the dazed people wandering the yard is Casey.

“I’m going back in,” she rasps. Bela’s eyes widen, but she doesn’t try to stop Jo.

Fire licks at the windows of the whole second story, but Jo tries to run up the grand staircase anyway. The top few stairs are consumed by flame and she has to turn around and run down. If Casey’s on the second floor, she’s a lost cause. No one’s in any of the large salons on the first floor. Jo yells Casey’s name and hears nothing. She makes her way further back into the darkness of the house. She can hear creaking and snapping above her as the fire eats away at the second story. It won’t be long before things start collapsing.

“Casey!”

There’s a banging ahead of her. Jo goes as far as she can, trying not to bump into walls. She enters a room with a tile floor that must be the kitchen. The banging is louder. “Casey!”

She can just make it out now, a large pantry with a wooden door. The wood is vibrating with every bang. Casey must be trapped inside. Jo tries the knob but it’s stuck. She puts her sword down. She plants both feet flat on the floor, grabs the knob with both hands, and throws her weight into wrenching the door open. It groans open so suddenly that she stumbles backward a step. But Casey jumps out of the pantry.

Jo would sigh with relief but she can’t spare the air. She picks up her sword, takes Casey’s hand and starts to run toward the front door, but Casey tugs at her arm. Jo follows Casey’s gesture, sees a back door leading out of the kitchen, and they dash toward that instead.

As they exit the house, Jo hears the distant blare of sirens. Bela must have called the fire department. She circles around to the front of the house with Casey, both of them barefoot in the grass. “You okay?” she says, once they’re farther from the house.

Casey is staring at the blood on her sword. Jo takes a moment to wipe the blade on the grass. “You killed him.”

“Yeah.”

Casey thinks about it for a long moment, nods her head of brown curls slowly, absorbing the knowledge. “I wish it had been me,” she says, speaking more loudly. She blinks as if she’s stunned by the sound of her own voice. “But if I didn’t get to, I’m glad it was you.”

They join the rest of the crowd in front of the house. “You got somewhere to go?”

“I… have a family,” Casey says. “Or I used to, anyway.”

“How long have you been here? How old are you?”

“Three years, I think? What month is it?”

 _Holy shit_. “September.”

“I’m—seventeen, I guess.”

“We’ll get you back to your family,” Jo promises. They wait outside Bela’s car for the emergency vehicles to show up. It’s a long enough wait that Jo realizes she’s shivering, not to mention barefoot and covered in soot and vampire blood. The little dress that Bela lent her is totally ruined, but then, Bela’s own dress doesn’t look much better.

Bela opens her trunk and gets out a leather jacket. At first, Jo thinks Bela might be offering it to her, but then Bela hands it to Casey instead. Jo watches the two of them for a moment, notes the strange way that Bela looks at Casey. She looks sad, but it’s not pity. It looks more like empathy. _The ice queen has a heart after all_.

When the firefighters and paramedics arrive, Jo looks down at her hand and discovers she’s still clutching the sword. Discreetly, she opens one of the back doors of Bela’s car and slides it into the seat. If anybody asks, she’ll say she’s into historical reenactments or something.

Nobody asks. There’s enough to do, putting out the fire and sorting out all the people who were in the house. Jo waits until she’s sure one of the emergency responders will take Casey home to her family, then she finds a napkin in Bela’s glovebox and writes her number on it. She presses it into Casey’s hands and tells her to call if she needs anything. Casey offers to return Bela’s jacket, but Bela waves her hand dismissively. Then Jo and Bela take off down the driveway.

After a moment, it occurs to Jo that while she accomplished her mission—vamp ganked, people saved—her mission was not the only one. “I’m sorry you didn’t get what you came for,” she says.

Bela takes a hand off the steering wheel and reaches into the side of her dress. She pulls out a sheaf of paper that must have been nestled flat against her stomach and holds it up between them. She smiles. “I told you I was light-fingered,” she says.

“What’s this all about, anyway? Some Italian witch? And a French guy?”

“Jean-François—I suppose I should call him Gary—was an admirer, even an imitator, of an eighteenth-century French aristocrat called the marquis de Mirval, a famous libertine. Like many of the bored rich people who comprise my clientele today, Mirval was obsessed with all things supernatural.”

“So he bought everything this Italian witch owned.”

“What little was left of it, anyway, which included some pages of her diary and her correspondence,” Bela says. “Alessandra Scardina was a highly educated _cortegiana onesta_ and poet in Renaissance Venice. She may also have been a witch. You probably heard Gary talking about her—legend would have you believe she outsmarted the devil. Or more specifically, that she’s the only person who ever got out of a deal with a demon.”

“What did you want this stuff for, anyway? Is it worth a lot of money? Is it for one of your clients?”

“Monetarily, it’s probably worth very little.”

Jo raises her eyebrows. “And not monetarily?”

“I don’t know,” Bela says.

“Lot of trouble for a few pages,” Jo observes. From her point of view, it was a completely successful hunt. She’s just not sure what Bela’s story is.

“You saved that girl,” Bela says, changing the subject entirely.

“Somebody had to.”

“You’re a good person, Joanna Harvelle.”

“What, you wouldn’t have saved her?”

“A lot of people in the world need saving,” Bela says. “Not all of them get saved.”

Jo’s not sure what to make of that, so she keeps quiet. The atmosphere in the car’s different now. The air between them doesn’t hum with the same electricity. Sometimes after a hunt, her blood’s running high and all she wants is a good fuck. Tonight, exhaustion sets in early. She wants a shower.

“If there is anything useful in the sections of Alessandra’s diary,” Bela says, after awhile, “it will be worth a great deal to me.”

That statement has the sound of an offering, but Jo’s still not entirely satisfied. “Is it living forever you want, or outsmarting the devil?”

“I was a lot like her, you know,” Bela says. Casey? _Bela_ was like Casey? “But there was no _you_. No one showed up with a shining sword to rescue me.”

The story is slow to come out. Jo has the feeling it’s never been told before.

“I thought I was saving myself. Ten years sounds like a long time when you can’t bear to live with your family for one more minute.”

“You made a deal,” Jo says, all the pieces falling into place. “You made a deal with a demon and it’s about to come due.”

Bela says nothing after that.

“I’m sorry,” Jo says. “I wish I could help you.”

“You may have.”

Jo thinks about what she might want if she knew her death was only a short ways down the road. How would she think about her life differently if she knew she’d never make it to 30? Not that she was the kind of girl who spent her childhood daydreaming about a white dress, but the thought of never finding someone to share her life with was depressing. No wedding, no babies, no family barbecues or trips to the beach. No retirement spent in a rocking chair on the Roadhouse front porch. What would she want, if that were true? The answers are surprisingly similar to what she wants right now: a shower, a nice bed, some human comfort.

“Will you come back to the Roadhouse with me?”

Bela swallows and nods wordlessly.

The rest of the drive is quiet. Jo’s nearly slipping into sleep by the time the warm glow of the Roadhouse porchlight comes into view. They get out of the car, pick up the sword and the sheaf of pages, and go inside. The Roadhouse might not have gilt or brocade, but it’s safe and it’s home and there’s no one around. They strip out of their dresses in Jo’s bathroom and drop both of them into the trash.

Then they’re just standing there, naked and filthy and exhausted, waiting for the shower to warm up. Jo almost laughs—this isn’t exactly how she imagined it.

Still, it feels good when she leans forward and kisses Bela.

The shower feels even better. By the time they come into Jo’s bedroom, Jo feels like an entirely new person, clean and refreshed and happy. She finds Bela a t-shirt and a pair of underwear to wear, and they both turn toward the bed. Jo’s recently acquired sword is still lying on top of it.

“All good swords have names, you know,” Bela says.

Jo picks up the sword. The steel blade glints in the light of her bedroom, small but deadly. She smiles. “Waif,” she says. “This one is called ‘Waif.’”


End file.
